PART 1 – 2001
Chapter 1
Halifax, Friday November 23rd 2001
It’s raining. A persistent, relentless drizzle is slanting down from the big, black clouds hanging over the Pennines to the west like a big, black blanket smothering the landscape and everyone’s holding black umbrellas as they stand around the grave and watch the coffins being lowered into the mud in a hole in the ground at Old Harwood cemetery. The scene makes me think of a painting I’ve seen… Renoir maybe, but I’m not sure…
There aren’t many of us. My Uncle Frank’s standing next to me - I can smell beer on his breath - and on the other side of the grave are two aunts and three uncles and four cousins that I’ve never seen before and who stare at me as if I have two heads and one of the cousins spits on the ground and mumbles something to his brother. I think he refers to me as a “fucking rapist”, but I might have misheard.
There’s a man in a dark Gannex raincoat standing to one side, discreetly distancing himself, with a woman in a wheelchair next to him wearing a patch over her left eye. Mr Greville Hartley and his wife, Rebecca. He still looks like Gene Hackman and she still looks like Princess Margaret. Greville looks dour and stern and glances away when I catch his eye. Rebecca looks absent and phased out as if she’s on some industrial-strength tranquillizers. The vicar comes to the end of whatever he’s been saying and we all shuffle away, heads down into the wind, feet scrunching on wet gravel. No-one’s saying a word.
And then I hear a voice, a shout… “Paul!” and I look over to where the sound’s coming from and I see Sarah running towards me and she almost falls over and then she’s throwing her arms around me and she’s crying.
“Paul, Paul, I’m so sorry”, she says.
And she’s still hugging me as tight as she can and I hug her back and I don’t know what to do or say.
“I never believed them”, she says, “but why didn’t you write to me, I’ve been waiting…”.
“I tried…” I say, and then suddenly Greville’s there, pulling her off, and another man, and they bustle Sarah to one side and then Greville’s back and he’s pointing a finger at me and he’s livid.
“No more!”, he barks. “You’re done!”.
And then he calms down a bit and turns and watches as Sarah’s led away by two men, and she squirms and turns round and I think I can read something on her lips but I can’t quite make it out. Greville steps in front of me, blocking my view, and another minder appears next to him and glares at me.
“I’m deeply sorry, Paul, my sincere condolences”, Greville says, and for a moment I think he’s going to put his hand on my shoulder but he doesn’t.
“But you’re not to see Sarah again. That’s over. Finished”.
And he turns away and moves over to his wife who’s smiling at me. She’s actually smiling. A ridiculous sick smile, as if she’s happy to be sitting there in a wheelchair at a sodden wind-swept funeral and see her daughter being led away in tears and a young man standing in a drenched black suit with a ghostly white bloodless face and tears of his own dribbling down his cheeks in the rain.
When I Grow Up By Sarah Hartley, aged 8 3/4
When I grow up I will get maried to Mr X (ssh!!! Its a secret!!!). We will live in a cotage next to a rivver and we will have 3 children. There names will be Alexander, Anna and Peter. We will get maried in All Saints Church and the quire will sing All Things Brite and Beuatifull becuase it is my faverite hym. I will ware a long white dress with lots of lase and ribons on it. My friend will ware a Top Hat and he will have a rose on his jacket because it is my faverite flower. I will be a very good mummy becuase I will not fall over and set fire to the sofa like my friends Mummy does. And my friend will be a very good Daddy becuase he will not hit the children like his Daddy. I like my friend more than everybody. He sayes I am his Princess and I like that. We will do a honey moon to a desert hiland like Ibizza where I went one time when I was littel. Our children will all be very happy and they will be aloud to play out till 8 oclock. My friend wants to be a airoplane pilate but I want him to stay at home and look after me and mend the fense and things like that. And we can play football and make cakes. We will have a lot of monney becuase my Daddy is very rich. We will have 2 dogs and 2 cats. We will all live hapily ever after.
“It was that big bend on the Deanscar Road, where they had the stone wall above the river. Except there’s no wall any more, just a sheer drop down to the rocks.”
Uncle Frank’s on his fourth pint and it’s not even tea-time. We’re sitting in the Hare and Hounds and I’m nursing a pint of shandy while Frank gets kippered.
“They died instantly, son, there’s no need to fret about that. I saw the car…”.
His eyes glaze over as he no doubt flashes back to a vision of carnage and mutilation.
“And they found alcohol and drugs in their blood”, I say.
Frank wipes froth from his top lip and looks grim. He’s 55 years old and he looks 70. Hollow cheeks and dark bags under his eyes. A nervous tick in his right cheek. One arm of his thick, scratched, horn-rim glasses is held in place with yellowing Sellotape. He drums his fingers on the table.
“They did, yeah”.
“Massive amounts”.
“The official report doesn’t say that though…”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugs and picks at a hang-nail. His hands make me think of bird claws.
“He was pissed”, I say.
He gazes at me accusingly.
“Your dad always did like a pint or two. Nowt wrong wi’ that”.
I almost laugh. My parents had been alcoholics for as long as I could remember. Functioning alcoholics, as their work never seemed to suffer, as far as I could tell, but serious alkies all the same. And not happy drunks either.
“Don’t judge ‘em son, you know fuck all about it.”
“I was there, remember, I lived with them.”
And I took a slap or two now and again, I could have added.
“People drink, Paul, for all kinds of reasons. And not just because it tastes nice or loosens your tongue or makes you feel ‘happy’”.
He spits out the word as if it were a splinter of glass he was about to choke on.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I used to drink to forget…”
I know what’s coming next but I feed him the line anyway.
“What about now?”
“I can’t remember.”
He considers laughing but thinks better of it. He does some more of the finger-drumming business.
“So if I know fuck all about it, then why don’t you fill me in. What am I missing? What were their excuses for getting wasted and being bitter and trying to buy my affection with gifts and bribes?”
He looks down at the table, shaking his head.
“Oh, Paul… your parents loved you, more than anythin’… really, they did… it wasn’t that… it wasn’t that at all!”
“Then what was it?”
He takes a swig of his pint, his hand trembling slightly.
“Some things I know and some things I don’t”, he says, as if he’s imparting a precious nugget of Yorkshire wisdom. “And then there’s what I can say and what I can’t…”
“Cut the crap, Frank!”
“He was me brother, son, and she was me sister-in-law!”
“Right, and they were my parents! For fuck’s sake, Frank, if you have anything to tell me, then spit it out. I haven’t seen you in donkey’s years. I might never be back! Give me a fucking break! What do I need to know?”
He looks vaguely lucid for a brief moment as he thinks about this.
“Need to know? There’s nothing you need to know, son; not th
at’ll help you or make your life better or ease your conscience or serve their memories… except that they did love you, that’s all… you do need to know that. That’s all that matters. As for the rest…”
Describe a person you know By Paul Boyd aged 10 1/2
The ‘person I know’ is a girl. She is my best friend ever. She is very pretty. She has long curley blond hair. She has a lot of freckels. One time I tried to count them and I lost count at 79 because she was riggling about and laffing so much. The ‘person I know’ likes to clime trees and play football. I dont think a lot of girls like to clime trees and play football but ‘the person I know’ likes it. One time she fell over in the mud and her dress was very torne and dirty but her mummy and daddy wernt too cross and the next day she had another dress just the same! In the summer her skin is brown and shiny but my skin gos all pink and blotshey. I told my Mum I want to get marryed to ‘the person I know’ but my mum all most cryed and then she said that I will meet a lot of girls before I am old enuogh to get marryed and then I said I dont want to meet a lot of girls and then I said that I saw a king and queen getting marryed on TV in a film and they were only 12 and then I aksed my mum if there are diffrent rules for kings and queens and it wasnt fair. I will be 12 next year and the person I know will be 11. I want us to get marryed soon because I have to go to a new school next year and I will have to take the number 34 bus and we cant walk to school together like what we do now. Every thing will be diffrent but I dont want every thing to be diffrent. The ‘person I know’ can sing just like Maria Cary and she can speak french and itallion all ready because she has a house abroard some where. The favorit color of ‘the person I know’ is green. My favorit color is green too. The ‘person I know’ has green eyes just like my mum and she wears size 2 1/2 shoose. She has a scar on her elbow from when she fell off a horse when she was 5. She has a dog called Robbie after Robbie Williams and I have a cat called Bart after Bart Simpson. The ‘person I know’ always smells nice like flowers and soap and her cheeks are like a peech and shes’ very funny. She has a lot of friends but I think they only like her cos her dads very rich and she doesnt like any one as much as me. She told me so. That's ‘the person I know’. The end.
The Cottage looks cold and clammy and creepy. The rain’s still falling and the grey sky over the trees is turning blacker by the minute as the gloomy Yorkshire light drains away into the oncoming night. I’m standing there, looking at the place I was born and where my parents had lived until a week ago when their crushed lifeless bodies were pulled out of a car wreck and stuffed into plastic bags and I’d never talk to them again.
I haven’t talked to them in years anyway. What’s the difference?
I’m almost expecting to hear echoes of music and snatches of laughter and fragments of happy chit-chat like in a film as I peer through the windows and reminisce.
Is that what I’m doing? Reminiscing?
And then I can hear music… and screaming, and I can remember a rare sunny day in summer when I was maybe five or six years old and I’d come home from somewhere… from a game of football which had been cancelled for some reason… and I’d been dropped off at home early and I was about to open the front door when I heard shouts and cries and screams from inside. It was my mother… and I thought she was hurt and then there were other sounds, like animal noises, all grunts and moans and snorting and there was a man… Dad was in one of his ‘states’ again. But I knew they weren’t fighting this time, it was something else. And then Mum yelled “No more!” and she was crying for a bit and then everything went quiet and I didn’t know what to do. I heard a car going past on the lane behind me and there was loud music: the Boomtown Rats were singing “I Don’t Like Mondays” and then there was a crowd of people cheering and singing and the music faded and the car disappeared and I turned round and climbed through the hole in the wall to the Castle grounds and I went and hid in the best place in the world until I got hungry and I thought it was safe to go home.
And it wasn’t a Monday, it was a Saturday.
I don’t like Saturdays. Not any more.
I don’t know where that memory has come from, I haven’t thought about that in years. I turn away from the Cottage and look up towards the Castle and I wonder if Sarah is in there and if she’s looking out and if she can see me.
Sarah… who I haven’t seen in 6 years and now she’s 19 years old and a woman.
A beautiful woman, just as she was a beautiful girl all those years ago.
Although for me, her beauty was just a bonus, it wasn’t the reason I loved her.
I’ve gone through the scene at the cemetery in my head and I reckon I saw her for a total of about 50 seconds and I said exactly two words to her: “I tried”.
She’d been wearing black jeans and a black polo neck sweater and a black raincoat and she’d smelled of soap and flowers and her skin was like a peach against mine as she hugged me and cried.
I’m reminiscing now, I think.
Fuck it. And I walk back to my car and I drive away.
I’m staying at a soulless, godforsaken motel just off the M62. I’ve showered and changed and I’m wondering what to do. Uncle Frank’s promised to deal with packing up my parents’ things and looking after any other business that crops up, like seeing the solicitor about the will, an appointment I’ve already put off three times. I’ve told Frank I don’t want anything. No souvenirs, no heirlooms, no nothing. As Greville said, I’m done. I’m done with this town and the memories that surge up with every corner I turn and I can’t think of a single thing they might have owned that I want to keep. I haven’t even kept their name.
I’m supposed to be in Amsterdam in three days time for the start of a 10-day Grand-Tour-of-Europe coach trip with a group of culture-starved American tourists and I really should just get in the car and leave but I’m tired and cold and hungry and I can’t face six hours driving in the rain and the dark.
I leave the motel and walk along Heywood Lane towards a cluster of houses bathed in pale yellow light from a Chinese takeaway and a couple of dull street-lights. There’s a pub here, the Nag’s Head, not one I used to frequent, and I doubt if anyone will know me. I dare say I’ve changed a bit since I was 16; grown a bit, filled out, worked up some muscle, and long periods of foreign sunshine have given me a decent tan, but I’ll still be recognisable. And I can’t see any benefits in that.
On the contrary…
An hour later I’m on my second pint and half-way through a plate of chicken and chips, staring at the local paper but thinking about Uncle Frank and what he’d said and what he hadn’t said, when Terry Booth walks in with one of his interchangeable cousins. I’m surprised, as the pub is quite an up-market, homey place, with middle-class couples and comfortable armchairs and easy-listening jazz playing softly in the background. Not the sort of place you’d expect to see Terry Booth. I doubt they do a lot of crack dealing in the toilets here, and if he were to start any trouble the bar staff would no doubt be onto the cops before he had a chance to say “You and me, outside, now!”
I automatically lower my head and from the corner of my eye I watch him head for the bar and order a drink. He looks round the pub and his gaze passes over me.
I continue eating, wondering what’s going to happen next. Getting up and leaving seems like the smartest move, but I stay put and fork chips into my mouth and wash them down with the last of my Tetley’s.
When I’ve done that I get up and walk over to the bar with my empty glass. Terry glances at me and does a double-take.
“Fuck me sideways! Paul Boyd!”, and his mouth hangs open as he takes me in. He’s put on a few pounds over the years. He looks like Proctor and Gamble’s Mr Clean.
“All right, Terry, how are you doing?”
I get a fresh pint and walk back to my seat.
I can feel him watching me as I read the personal ads on page 9 of the Huddersfield Examiner. “Ford Escort for sale… Hindi lessons… Baby-sitting…”
&nbs
p; Terry’s on his mobile now, and he’s looking a bit excited.
I look at my watch. It’s 9.40. If I’m going to leave, I should leave now, before the reinforcements arrive.
I don’t move. I don’t know why… maybe I know what’s coming and I don’t care.
But I don’t know what’s coming. Only that it’s someone’s idea of payback. I’ve had dealings with the Booths before.
Chapter 2
The Booth family were legendary in West Yorkshire. The dynasty had been founded by Chris “Cracker” Booth, a one-time enforcer for a brutal gang of Jamaican cannabis dealers in Manchester. His reputation, and nickname, came from the fact that he tended to break people’s fingers with his bare hands whenever they committed some inadmissible misdemeanour or other, like not shelling out the readies on time, grassing on a mate or, more often than not, just wearing the wrong T-shirt.
His loyalty to the Moss Side cartel ring-leaders, which had resulted in him taking a three-year stretch in Strangeways in lieu of one his bosses, was rewarded by the attribution of his own patch, covering a considerable piece of the Huddersfield/Halifax territory, and he’d run a fair amount of action there in the late 70s, carefully investing his earnings, buying up council houses whenever he could “persuade” the relevant council members to sign off on them. On certain local estates, there were whole rows of former social housing units owned by the Booths, probably with connecting doors - if not bedrooms – filled with identical-looking, pale, vitamin-deficient children whose vocabulary seemed to be restricted to words beginning with b, f, s, and c, the scrubby lawns and yards out front adorned by garish plastic furniture, attack-dog kennels and severely tuned-up Subarus in lime green and pink.
Cracker had married an Irish ex-pro called Brenda who, the story went, had single-handedly taken on half the Colne Valley Rugby League team at a drunken victory-night-celebration-cum-gang-bang, and won, hands down. They’d bred a coven of like-minded entrepreneurial offspring led by his eldest son, Jimmy Booth, who was reputed to be the first man in the West Riding to own a genuine AK47. It was said (discreetly), that the Booth kids mastered the recipe for crystal meth before they learned how to wipe their own arses. It wasn’t hard to believe.
The King's Shilling Page 1
